


Lightning Crashes I thru III

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-09-30
Updated: 1999-09-30
Packaged: 2018-11-20 19:23:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11341740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: Lightning gives brilliant, but imprecise illumination. An exploration of a relationship between Skinner and Mulder.





	Lightning Crashes I thru III

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Lightning Crashes I By Rye

Lightning Crashes  
By Rye ()  
Category: S, A, R (M/Sk)  
Rating: NC-17  
Keywords: Slash, Mulder/Skinner  
Spoilers: Duane Barry, One Breath (sort of), Zero Sum  
Summary: Lightning gives brilliant, but imprecise illumination. An exploration of a relationship between Skinner and Mulder.  
Disclaimer: These characters and situations are merely borrowed trappings. I have soiled them lightly, but will wash and press them before return.  
My deep thanks to CGS who illuminates precisely and brilliantly. And to H and D, who helped me think I could do this.  
Author's notes at the end.

* * *

Lightning Crashes  
by Rye (June 1998)

Lightning.

The smell of ozone. Burning, sweeping in across the night, riding on the cool, moist air that was the forerunner of....

<<Crash>>

Thunder rattling the world, shaking the trees and the window panes, followed by the...

Rain.

Always the rain.

Lightning. 

Too bright to look at directly, but his gaze was pulled there anyway, hypnotized by the streaks and tears in the sky that threatened to rend the heavens and allow destruction and devastation to pour down with the rain.

Always the rain.

He stared out the window, barely noticing the raindrops that forced their way through the screen to lightly speckle his already damp, warm skin. Unconsciously holding his breath at each crack of thunder, tensing against the enemy onslaught that never came. That hadn't come in over 20 years.

This was no longer that verdant and deadly jungle. It was another maze, another threat, but not that jungle. That jungle had receded. It waited at the end for him, though. He knew it waited.

Lightning.

Zigging and zagging in and out of memory. Illuminating thoughts and pictures of the past in random patterns. No rhyme or reason. No pattern.

Except there was a pattern.

Mulder. 

He finally moved, casting a glance back over his shoulder to the figure sleeping in the darkness, seemingly unaware of the battle being waged by the elements against man. The figure that haunted him in ways that he could scarcely begin to explain or even imagine. A force of nature in his own right, it seemed fitting that he could sleep through this.

Not for the first time, Skinner found himself wondering about how it had all begun, and how it might end.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

It had been a dark and desperate time. A time unimaginable and yet far too real.

Scully was gone. Snatched, taken from her house, tracked and nearly found through fate or random chance or malicious design, and then simply...gone.

Mulder had been lost. Abandoned, betrayed, unmoored. He was adrift without Scully. Skinner had recognized the feeling, had empathized. He, too, had lost comrades in arms. He knew the raw, unanswerable grief and aloneness of that condition. Had wanted to reach out to the younger man, but hadn't known how. Had no words to say the things that couldn't be said.

And then one night, almost 2-1/2 months after Scully's disappearance, it happened. 

There was a bar in a dark and less frequented part of Alexandria Skinner sometimes visited when he needed to be away. To lose himself among other faceless men who carried ghosts in the backs of their eyes, and unregistered weapons in their pockets. It was not a safe, yuppie pub with micro-brews, but it was a haven of sorts. The men there recognized him as a kindred shadow and left him alone, accurately reading the danger in the set of his shoulders and the purpose in his stride. 

He never expected to find Mulder there. 

Mulder had somehow slipped away from that pretty parasite Krycek who had been sent to watch him, and was in the back, working on what appeared to be his fifth or six bourbon.

Skinner's first impulse was to turn away, to leave Mulder to handle his worry and sorrow alone. But looking again at the younger man's face, etched into premature age with the weight of his partner's loss, he found himself approaching that back booth.

"Mulder." A greeting that neither asked questions nor made demands.

The agent closed his eyes without ever looking up. Remarkably his voice was clear, no hint of a drunken slur. "I might have known you'd hang out in a place like this." The tone was resigned, but vaguely amused somehow. Skinner didn't know whether to answer the amusement or be affronted. Before he could decide, Mulder looked up at him, and Skinner was shocked by the misery that floated in the depths of the green eyes. "As long as you're here, you might as well sit down."

Sliding into the booth, settling back into the corner, instinctively seeking the shadows, Skinner found himself choking on the words he'd begun formulating on his walk across the bar. There were no words for these situations. No words.

The quiet was broken by the waitress bringing him his usual tumbler of scotch. Neat.

A silent toast and the men drank.

The silence stretched between them for an interminable length, filled with echoes of old conversations, confrontations, and Scully. Scully's presence filled the emptiness, causing it to reverberate and tremble.

"Mulder. It's not your fault." Wincing, it was such an impotent opening, meaningless in its supposed comfort, but what else was there?

The ironic gaze, softened only slightly by the bourbon, scorched him. "Really? I'd have to beg to differ, *sir*, I didn't exactly get there in time, did I?"

"Mulder, you know these men," aware that he was betraying something about the game that he shouldn't, "maybe no one could have gotten there in time." He tried to keep the same level tone he would use in a debrief. Tried desperately to find footing in these unfamiliar waters. He wanted to touch Mulder, but was afraid the agent would shatter under his touch. He was bemused for a moment by that desire--the need to reach out to the other man, so unlike him. But the need was dark and familiar.

Mulder hissed in a breath. "I should have been there, I should have been there...." 

Skinner let the silence extend again. Then he startled himself and the younger man by reaching across the table to lightly lay his hand on Mulder's wrist. "There are times when even being there isn't enough." His voice carried the weight of the dead, and he watched dispassionately as Mulder shivered. 

A crack in the self-possessed misery. "I know." The voice was uncertain - the product of spending too much time alone, replaying scenarios over and over. "But I should have been there."

"I know. But then there might not be anyone left to look for her."

Mulder's head snapped up, and his suspicious glare arced across the small table. "You would have looked for *her*." 

Mildly. "If I could. Yes, I would have, but I don't have quite the same freedoms, as an AD, as...others." 

"Freedom doesn't always give you everything you need."

"It never did, Mulder, but it's a start."

The agent drained his glass and then cradled it in his hand, rolling it in his palm, watching the light shift on the refractive surface. It seemed to Skinner that Mulder's decision about what to do next: put down the glass, order another drink, throw the glass against the nearest wall, would determine more than simply the next five minutes.

A soul-wrenching sigh shook him and then Mulder gently placed the glass upside down on the table.

"I don't even know where to look anymore. I don't know what to do." The confession seemed to have cost him almost all his courage. He didn't even raise his head.

"There are times when the hardest part is waiting." He forestalled the impatient huff from the other man. "You know I was in Vietnam, right?" Waited for the nod of recognition before continuing. 

"We patrolled constantly...endlessly...night after night. The night stalks through the jungle took on a surreal quality. We walked a million miles, or maybe only a few feet, it was impossible to tell, and after a while, impossible to care. But we walked. In the end, the only thing that mattered was to survive. To come home one more time. To last until the next patrol. Because maybe on that next patrol, you would find the Charlie who had been shooting at you, and you would get him first." And now he was lost, back in that jungle lit with nothing more than moonlight, and the lightning strikes of storms, and tracer bullets, and sniper fire. Lost once more in the bloodlust that had, for a time, consumed him .

He felt Mulder watching him, and looked up to meet eyes that had focused once more.

"We don't know what happened to Scully...." he stopped himself before he voiced his own thoughts that in all tragic probability she was dead. Realism was not what was needed in this bar, this night. This was a moment for false bravado. For the briefest of moments, Skinner was 19 again, bragging around the fire about how they were all going to be heroes, but that was before....before. "But if you quit patrolling, even randomly, you may never find her, or discover what happened to her."

"The stumbling into answers through sheer chance theory, Walt? I seemed to have missed that one at the Academy." The sarcasm in the agent's voice barely disguised the shock that jolted both of them by the use of the AD's first name.

"You can be an ugly drunk, Mulder." Skinner observed quietly, no real menace or judgement in his voice.

The statement alone seemed to have a sobering impact, and Mulder flushed visibly in the dim light of the bar. "Sorry." A brief hesitation. "I know what you mean, but I don't have the patience."

"It's an acquired art."

Something that almost looked like humor passed over agent's face, rendering him young again for an instant. "If I don't have it now, I don't think I'm acquiring it, unless it's something they issue you on promotion to management." 

"Well, given that you are unlikely to see management anytime soon...." Skinner let his voice trail off. Jesus, the mood swings of this man never ceased to amaze. He finished his own drink, and fished out his wallet - left a couple twenties on the table.

"You don't have to...." 

He cut off the protest. "Let's get out of here." He was surprised when Mulder did indeed follow him out onto the early morning streets of Alexandria.

####

The beginning, he thought, with the taste of now bitter familiarity. Even then, he'd recognized that night as crucial, defining, although it had ended quietly enough.

####

"Did you drive?" He surprised himself yet again that night.

Mulder turned toward him, more readable now in the glow of the streetlight. It was so rare to deal with people who met him eye-to-eye. Both figuratively and literally. Mulder was so lithe, that Skinner sometimes forgot that the agent was as tall as he. "Nah--just walked over. I don't live too far from here."

"That's right." The acknowledgement that he knew where Mulder lived was out before he could stop it. Damn. He'd only had one scotch that night - not even enough to take the edge off, normally.

Mulder said nothing, just watched him for a long impassive moment, and then some kind of decision reached, shrugged. "Do you want to come over for a drink?"

Skinner sensed that the question offered more than the apparent, but was in no mood to think about anything too much. It had already been such a long, strange night. "Sure."

They'd walked over in silence and shared another drink at Mulder's in near silence. An odd companionship hovering between them. Fragile, but inhabitable.

As he left, Skinner was surprised that Mulder walked him to the door, the gesture oddly intimate. He'd turned in the doorway to say goodnight, and had found the other man mere inches away. He reached out and laid his hand on Mulder's shoulder for a second - trying in that brief moment of contact to convey something that he still had no words for. 

After a long pause, Mulder simply shook his head slightly and Skinner left, feeling vaguely foolish and vaguely elated.

###

Yes, the beginning. It had not been steady, or planned, or even expected. But like lightning, the force of the connection established that night was not to be denied. It continued to streak through their lives at odd intervals, burning and destroying in its path, but also renewing them in strange ways. Like the lightning strikes that start the forest fires that are, after all, necessary for regrowth.

###

A particularly close bolt of lightning shook the room they shared, and Mulder turned and muttered in his sleep. "No! no...." But whatever night demon had him in its grip relinquished control fairly quickly. He subsided back to sleep, coming to rest on his side, facing Skinner.

Turning away from the window, Skinner contemplated his sleeping lover. Lover. A strange word. It carried connotations of tenderness and commitment that had no place in this needy, almost desperate thing that bound them...for which there was no single word - no simple definition.

Stirred to arousal simply by looking at the slumbering man, Skinner began to move toward the bed, to shake Mulder awake and into another frantic, deliberate coupling. But the surge of need and lust that coursed through him tripped some random switch in his brain, and he found recollection once more ripping him backward through time.... not to the beginning, but to the middle.

*******

Scully had been gone again, but only temporarily. Overnight in the hospital, for another round of tests that would only confirm the inevitable. She was dying. And not slowly.

Skinner was enmeshed in his own private hell. The deal with the cigarette smoker had gone from bad to worse, each action eroding one more part of soul until there was precious little left. He'd felt almost nothing as he dumped that poor woman's body into the flames, the furnace itself - hot enough to cremate a human corpse -not enough to warm him ever again.

The deal.

What a stupid, arrogant blunder he'd made. Blindly inserting himself between Mulder and the smoker. Left to question on a daily basis why he'd utterly failed to take his own advice, why he'd allowed himself to risk everything on a fool's hope.

The only answer, of course, was that he was a fool. Had long been a fool in uncharacteristic ways where Mulder and Scully were concerned. In the dark of night, when he no longer slept, Skinner would mull over the basis for the decision he'd made. Try to figure out if he had been trying to save Scully, Mulder, or himself. If, in fact, it was possible any longer for any of them to be saved.

A dark time.

But not the darkest. The true moment of despair had come when Mulder had lied about the gun. Had helped to conceal evidence of a crime, of the tampering with a Federal case. In that moment, with Scully dying, and Mulder ensnared in the conspiracy, he'd lost everything.

He'd told Mulder once that he'd lost faith in everything in Vietnam in that instant when he'd *had* to kill a 10-year old boy, before the boy killed the entire squad. But that faith had been rebuilt -slowly, and at great personal cost - and now it was lost again. And no phoenix would rise from these ashes.

It had been months since they'd been together...each encounter was approached as both a first and last time. There was no pattern, no established ritual. Skinner sometimes wondered why Mulder kept coming back. He knew what drew him, but couldn't imagine what compelled Mulder to return again and again.

Watching the betrayal stain Mulder's eyes as he revealed his deal with that chain smoking bastard, Skinner thought, in the small detached part of his brain where he allowed himself to think of Mulder at all, that there would be no more returns, now. That whatever it was that had never really happened would not happen again.

But then Mulder lied to the ballistics tech about the gun, and it would seem that Mulder had also removed the serial number that would have identified the gun as the property of one Walter S. Skinner, Assistant Director of the FBI. And it would seem that the earth had not been wholly scorched, after all.

Mulder had come to him that night, in his sterile, impersonal Crystal City apartment. That Mulder would come to him was unusual enough. Also, unusually, there was no attempt at any sort of prelude, or small talk.

The doorbell rang at 11:40. He had not been sleeping, had in fact been brooding in the dark of his living room, oblivious to place and time, but had been surprised to see Mulder standing there, silhouetted by the hall light.

Mulder clearly had no voice to say what was burning in his eyes, but Skinner read the anger and pain and guilt and gratitude in a single instant, and simply opened the door. Mulder entered the room - tense and wary - a cat ready to spark and hiss at the slightest noise. Then, without sound or warning, he had whirled and yanked Skinner into an ungentle embrace that shook both of them with the force of it.

"You...no.....you....no...no..." Mulder was incoherent in his rage and sorrow. Skinner was helpless to do anything but wrap his own arms around his agent - hold him tightly, feeling the hard length of the other's body against his own, marveling again at the strength in the man's frame. He was no longer sure if the trembling he felt came from Mulder, or was the echo of his own body's reaction. He wondered idly if Mulder was talking to him, or himself.

Doubt was erased when Mulder pulled back abruptly, his eyes icy emerald lasers in the almost-dark of the room. Hands gripping either side of Skinner's head, prelude to a kiss or snapping his neck. "You had no right." Fury, but mixed with something more complex.

"I had every right." Calm, aware that it was only a borrowed veneer.

"No. It was my deal to make. Scully is my partner..."

"And *my* agent. I had every right." If he said it often enough, one of them might believe it. Aware of the power in the fingers that held him, aware of the quicksilver, wholly inappropriate, and wholly unstoppable surge of arousal that coursed through his veins. That settled hot and hard and tight in his groin. Surely Mulder must feel....

"It should have been me....I should have been there." The old refrain, the need to save. Skinner knew and understood it -recognized that his own motives were driven by old losses, by other unprevented deaths. He moved his own hands up to cradle Mulder's face, trying to instill an unfamiliar gentleness in his touch.

"No. We need you out there - free - working for us...not for them." They spoke in children's riddles and code about things that were deadly serious.

"You could have...."

"No. You know better." He found a gentle note in his voice, tried to hold it. "It's shouldn't have been you. It shouldn't have been anyone. I failed, you know."

Fire leapt in the green. "You don't know that yet." The grip on his head eased, shifted. Hands beginning to flow over his body - hot, strong, knowing.

"I know. It's too late."

"No. I won't accept that." Mouth descending to meet his. Oh god. There was never anything that good. Demanding, hard, a little cruel, and he returned the kiss with all that was left of his soul. Which wasn't very much, but would have to do. He wondered if Mulder could taste the cold, the bitterness that pervaded him. Wondered if even this could begin to mitigate either.

He'd failed Mulder and Scully, but would at least have this. Could, by some quirk of fate, have this one more time. Because surely this would be the last time.

Unusual for Mulder to take such an aggressive lead. Not that either of them were particularly reticent, or shy, not after all this time. More often than not, though, it was Mulder who initiated the seduction, but Skinner who would reach out, make the first contact.

Mulder groaned deep in his throat and wrapped himself more tightly around the AD, his hands traveling the length of his back - one coming to rest on Skinner's hip, pulling their groins into unbearable contact.

"God."

A thrust, steel meeting steel. The tensile strength of Mulder surprised him anew each time, the coiled energy in the agent's body, just waiting to explode into action and touch and passion.

His own erection - hot, throbbing - a mind of its own, seeking the heat and strength of the other body, drawing him away from sanity and reason. Just like always. His body leading the dance, his mind slipping away to a dark and dangerous place. Reason taking second place to pure need and lust and desire.

His mouth, softening beneath Mulder's onslaught, and then returning the fire, pushing, probing, sliding. Moving down, to taste the sandpaper sweet of his jaw line, to trace his tongue along the agent's throat, until Mulder threw his head back in temporary surrender. "Oh, God! How do you do that....How..." and then even that momentary coherence was lost.

Triumph to reduce Mulder to this quivering state. To know that however briefly, Mulder would do anything, say anything to relieve this tension that gripped them both, that held them poised over an abyss that promised both redemption and damnation.

He was already unbuttoning Mulder's shirt, running his hands over the skin and muscle and coarse hair, reveling in the textures and heat beneath his fingers. Mulder managed to focus again blurrily. He looked confused, Skinner thought, as though he couldn't recognize the moment when he'd lost control of the situation, when Skinner had taken back the reins.

Passive for a moment, Mulder simply allowed him to lick and bite his way across the firm, vital flesh, tasting the salt of sweat and fear. He realized the younger man was trembling slightly beneath his touch. It didn't feel like the tremble of arousal that he was so familiar with - the vibrations that shook his own body. 

"Mulder?" 

"Yeah." Stubborn hazel eyes stared into the distance, refusing to meet his. Mulder's hands restlessly pulling at his body, trying to bring them into ever closer, hotter contact.

"What - "

The tone was controlled, but a little desperate. "It's nothing. Nothing. Just don't stop."

The words were meant to convey passion, but betrayed something else entirely. Almost gently he pushed the younger man against the wall by the door. One hand holding his shoulder pinned to the surface, the other by his face. "What is it?" The tone, he knew, despite his best efforts to keep it soft, carried command.

For a long minute, Mulder would still not meet his eyes. Kept them trained to a middle distance that was nowhere in this time or place. Finally, he closed them altogether. Just as Skinner was getting ready to shake him or kiss him again, or something, Mulder whispered, "I can't lose you both."

He lost his breath - sucker punched by emotion and sorrow and something that he refused to try to name.

"I'm not going anywhere." It was his AD's growl, but he hoped Mulder would hear the underlying promise.

Mulder finally opened his eyes. "You already have."

There was no answer for that, except to lower his mouth to Mulder's and try shut out everything that was not them. To reduce the world to nothing but their hands and mouths, and bodies and cocks. To narrow the focus until they could see nothing but this moment.

For that one night it almost worked. Hands moving desperately to remove clothing that blocked access to flesh and bone and scars. Mouths moving across chests to tease nipples, and bare skin.... searing molten paths on bodies that writhed and twisted in response.

Somehow they made it up the stairs, clothes torn and ripped from their bodies trailing after them in the dark apartment. 

At the foot of his bed, Skinner finally halted them, panting, holding onto each other with bruising, desperate grips. He wasn't sure if they were keeping each other afloat, or trying to pull the other beneath the surface, to allow the riptides to drown them once and for all. 

He wasn't sure where he found the force of will to pause, holding Mulder's head, searching his eyes in the dim light that spilled through the window from the surrounding city lights. He wasn't sure what he was looking for in those eyes, only that they held an answer that he needed more than oxygen.

And then he found it.

Forgiveness. Understanding of the motives that he had not even allowed himself to consider yet.

It nearly undid him. He felt the groan being wrenched from him, even as he lowered his mouth once more to capture Mulder's. But gently this time, gently.

Gentleness, though, could not withstand the force of the living desire that took them. That raged through them, leaving them senseless, blind, and deaf to rationality and patience. 

Now. Now. No time for preparation, or foreplay. The condom and lube were in his hands almost before he remembered reaching for them. The lube cool and slick, but warming quickly in his fevered hands, on the tight, dark ring of muscle. Then he was sinking, pushing, forcing his way home until he was buried completely within Mulder. Lost. Always lost.

Mulder's gasp abruptly brought him to his senses.

"Jesus. I should have..."

"No. Don't stop. Just don't stop." And this time the words were real, and as Mulder wrapped his legs around his waist, Skinner once more felt himself drawn into the rhythm that belonged to them and them alone.

His hand between their bodies - Mulder's cock hot and hard sliding between his fingers. Stroking in time to the thrusts that rocked them ever close to the edge. Feeling the white-dark fire begin to uncoil in his belly. Hearing the incoherent groans and whimpers that were torn from Mulder's throat. Watching hazel eyes turn green with pleasure and pain, swirling complexities loosed in their depths, depths that Skinner found himself sinking through. 

Tight, dark, hot, and Mulder met each thrust with force and need that matched his own. He could feel Mulder's cock twitching in his fingers, slick with lube and pre-cum, and then with an indecipherable shout Mulder was coming and coming and coming. The muscles tightening around his cock sent him over the edge, and with a final thrust home, he tumbled headlong into the abyss that he both feared and welcomed, because surely the fall to the bottom would finally kill him.

But it seemed that he had survived after all.

# # #

Memory released him, and he came back to the present, to the dark anonymous room, to find Mulder's mocking gaze resting on him. He wondered how long his agent had been watching him.

"See anything you like?" The tone was pure mischief.

"Mulder." The tone was a deliberate warning growl, but Skinner was very much afraid that the affection still bled through.

"You just going to stand there all night brooding?"

"I wasn't brooding." The denial was automatic.

Mulder simply raised his eyebrows. Skinner wondered when Scully had taught her partner that particular look. It was far too effective.

Lightning.

Burning....through the past and the future.

END

Author's note: I stole the title from a Live song. Sorry about that.

This is the first piece of a proposed series that postulates an ongoing relationship between Mulder and Skinner and that would draw from various M/Sk moments in the show. Pieces will be stand-alones, but will link to each other in an overall sense. This was my first foray into slash, and all constructive comments are welcome!

Thanks.  
Rye ()

 

* * *

 

21 September 1998  
Lightning Crashes II: Burning  
By Rye ()  
Archiving: Gossamer/Archive X ONLY No further distribution  
Rating: NC-17  
Category: S, A, R  
Keywords: Skinner/Mulder, slash  
Spoilers: US5 - Redux, Redux II  
Summary: Anger, like a sparked fire, can burn a forest to the ground. Sometimes, though, the inferno is necessary for regeneration.  
Note: This takes place in the same universe as Lightning Crashes. It is not necessary to read the first piece to understand this; you simply need to know that Mulder and Skinner have an ongoing, if sporadic, sexual relationship.  
My deep thanks and gratitude to CGS and DAP who provided insight, advice and support above the call of friendship. Thanks to K and H for brutal honesty.

* * *

Gone. Missing. AWOL. 

Mulder had pulled another of his god-damn stunts, completely oblivious to the impact of his actions. 

How could the agent do this? To Scully? To him? How could he do this now?

Skinner dwelled in his rage. It was safer, stronger place to be. The alternative was untenable.

He couldn't bring himself to believe the lie--gunshot wound to the face. Suicide. Dead. It couldn't be true. He wouldn't let it be true. Even as the image haunted his every waking moment, he denied it. Burned it away with fury.

Anger provided energy--kept him moving forward. Past all the other lies, from Blevins, and Scully, and the myriad other agents and faceless men and women who filed in and out of his office and who filled all the meetings that he had to keep attending. 

And then, of course, he knew it to be a lie. But still, the anger drove him, fueled him. Where was Mulder? When was he coming back? Was he coming back?

All the while he waited for a message, a sign, the smallest indication of contact. Didn't Mulder know who he could trust anymore? By keeping him out of the loop, who were Mulder and Scully imagine they were protecting--themselves or the AD?

With nothing to do but wait, Skinner waited. Waited for the ambush, for the sniper fire, waited for the phone call. Any phone call.

And then there came that awful meeting, with Scully's testimony, and her near-accusation of him, that was forestalled only by her collapse, and now all he could was wait again. 

He was so tired of waiting for death.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Outside Scully's Hospital Room

His first thought had been overwhelming relief. <He's not dead. I knew he wasn't dead. He's not dead.> Followed by the inevitable and nearly as paralyzing fury. <Dammit to hell and back....what the FUCK is he doing here?> But he knew why Mulder was there, even at the risk of his own life.

Following the AWOL agent down the corridor, through the doors into ICU, he'd temporarily halted the other agents. "Hold here." Thankful for the small perks the rank of AD still afforded him.

Knowing what would happen when Mulder saw Scully. Knowing how the steel trap would slam shut around Mulder's heart and soul. 

He found the younger man doubled over. Felled by the sucker punch of the unfairness of life and the insult of Scully lying pale, already nearly lifeless, in a hospital bed. In a moment of uncharacteristic fancy, Skinner wondered if Scully, even in her unconscious state could feel her partner there.

Rage, uncontrollable sorrow, guilt, all warring in Mulder's eyes and voice and face. Asking questions that had no answers. All action and motion with no focus beyond trying to reach her, even as he seemed to know that it wouldn't make any difference. But he needed to be there -- drawn by a force and a bond to Scully that was almost visible. The bond of battle-tested camaraderie that had no parallel in this world, not even a marriage could have been as intimate.

The encounter in the hallway and the subsequent hours reduced themselves to fragmented sensations and memories.

Mulder struggling against the AD as Skinner tried to get him out of there. To get him to safety. The feel of the agent's body against his own a familiar heat and hardness, but usually in a different struggle, a different passion.

"Don't make me put you under arrest! Don't!" His threat the only way to strike through layers of confusion and grief enveloping Mulder. Finally physically wrenching him away and out. 

Later, while Mulder was giving the first of his many evasive depositions, Skinner would find his mind distracted by the memory of Mulder's body against his own in the hospital corridor. The surge of inappropriate arousal that had washed over him leaving him nearly breathless, for the briefest of moments tempted to simply crush his mouth down over the lush lips that had been in front of him.

The human need for contact and reaffirmation of life amidst tragedy and death, he mused. The need to touch, to hold each other--as though somehow that could momentarily hold the grief at bay. There was so much grief to be shared, to held back, to be lived through.

But it was more than that. Not just an impersonal need to touch, to be touched. That spark he'd felt, that he thought he'd seen echoed ever so briefly in Mulder's eyes, was something darkly secret and personal. Something. Some need that belonged only to them. 

He missed the last few sentences that Blevins and Mulder exchanged, lost in memories that had no place in this office; in this building. But then suddenly Mulder was leaving. Skinner paused just long enough to exchange what he hoped was the appropriately exasperated glance with Blevins and then followed the agent out into the hall.

He'd hardly known how to start the conversation. Mulder needed a friend desperately, but Skinner also knew that in this state he would not be able to listen to the voice of reason or friendship, or whatever dark, inexplicable thing it was that bound the two of them together on so many other levels. 

They had, Skinner thought, long since moved beyond the need for words to express their trust, but the game had moved all of them to new places on the board and relationships were no longer clear. Of course there were no words to describe what he and Mulder had. What it meant. Or didn't mean. But he had thought that some fragile faith at least would survive through it all. Mulder's brusque dismissal of him opened a ripping fissure in his gut that he ruthlessly ignored.

He'd had to invoke Scully's name just to get Mulder to listen to him -- however grudgingly -- and even at that, Skinner had known that he was walking a narrow path, and that the slightest misstep would send them both hurtling into an abyss. The tightrope they'd walked for so long was already stretched and frayed. It was a dangerous thing they did, that they hid under the cloak of silence and dark and secrets. Finally though, he'd convinced him, had brought Mulder to the point of asking Skinner, "How can you help me?"

Then he nearly lost control of the whole situation again. Knowing that he was walking in a minefield of Mulder's deepest fear. Knowing that she was the only thing Mulder still believed in, he still had to ask. Had to torture both of them, "Tell me why Scully lied for you." Already knowing the answer, but unable to help himself. <Why didn't you talk to me? Why didn't you come to me?>

Mulder, unable to answer, but answering anyway....offering the accusation that Scully had been deliberately infected, and that there was a mole within the FBI. He'd known. He'd already known. No new information exchanged, but at least Mulder no longer looked at him with bleak, accusing eyes. The fissure in his gut narrowed, but only slightly.

And finally Mulder was striding away, down the corridor, and Skinner wondered with something that tasted almost like despair if he would ever see the man again.

# # #

Of course he did see him again. In that fateful hearing that unmasked Blevins, and then after that, again, in the corridor outside Scully's hospital room.

Public meetings, at which so many private things needed to be said, and couldn't be. Public meetings that further tangled their already complicated and intertwined lives. The raw currents of sex and lust and connection and something that could almost be called trust running through the years, snarling them in webs even more complex than the conspiracy in which they were ensnared. 

Scully's miracle had been procured after all, and Skinner thought that his own relief and gratitude for the inexplicable gift was nearly as great as Mulder's. The price had been high -- incalculable really -- but the reward was priceless. Scully would live, at least a while longer, which is all that any of them could ask for or hope for.

Mulder now would be able to go on, to survive and even thrive. He needed her in ways that were both obvious and subtle. Just as Skinner needed Mulder, in ways that he refused to name beyond the obvious--Mulder was the most likely candidate to take out the Shadow Conspiracy that threatened them all for so long. 

He knew that Mulder needed him, too--their lives' twisted paths looping and crossing until there existed between them a balance that was as vital as it was unexpected.

He ached for Mulder, though, even as he rejoiced for him. Scully had been returned to his side, and that was nearly everything, but he had discovered that the agent had also lost. Again. 

He'd left Scully's hospital room after the briefest of polite visits. Her family, although cordial, had clearly not wanted him there. And he'd been uncomfortably aware that it wasn't his place. It wasn't his right. He was merely an instrument, a bit player in this drama. He said his lines, and made his exit.

He'd found Mulder in the corridor, tears streaming down his face. At first he'd thought they had been simple tears of relief and joy at Scully's remission, but a closer look revealed something else entirely.

Uncaring of who might see them, he'd crouched in front of Mulder, covering his shaking hands with his own -- absently noting how his blunt, workman-like fingers covered the elegant, agile digits that still held the bloodstained photo.

"What is it?" A growl, but tempered by a note that only Mulder would hear.

"He brought her to me." Mulder wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Who?" Lost. Was this about that cigarette smoking bastard and Scully's cure? But they'd won, hadn't they?

"Samantha." Mulder's voice was barely audible over the clatter of the hospital hallway. Jesus. Skinner's breath left him in a silent exhale.

"When? How? What...?" What the hell was going on? If Samantha had been returned where the hell was she? Fuck. She wasn't here. That meant that.... he tried to keep his voice level, almost gentle. "Is she dead?"

Mulder's head snapped up at that. Eyes locking. He could drown there. Drown, lose himself, his sense of reasons, his bearings, his identity. It was Mulder's eyes that had first seduced him, had first let him know of the agent's own needs and desires. He shook off the inappropriate memories....Mulder needed him here, now.

"No. She's not dead. She's...alive....married...with children." Mulder closed his eyes, misery etched on his face.

This didn't make any sense. "Then....?" He didn't even know the question to ask.

The voice thin, thready. "She doesn't want to have anything to do with me. She wouldn't even consider going to see Mom. She called *him* 'father'."

Hidden traps everywhere. Waiting to slam shut on the unwary and unsuspecting. Iron teeth that will break bones and tear flesh.

His hands tightened over Mulder's and he was very much surprised when the agent turned his hands and twined his fingers around his own. "I'm sorry." The words so inadequate, but there was nothing else to say. "I'm so sorry." He closed his own eyes. Simply waited with Mulder for a long moment.

Finally, thighs protesting the crouched position, mind becoming aware that they could be discovered at any moment -- Scully's family was just behind that door -- Skinner moved to stand, to gently disengage his hands.

He opened his eyes as he stood and looked down into the desert of Mulder's loss. Even in triumph, there was defeat. The anger and ache in his gut warred to a stalemate conclusion, leaving him empty but for the need to somehow help Mulder.

Mulder looked bereft, as though he had been cast adrift. He simply sat, his hands still turned up in his lap, as though waiting for something to be dropped into them.

Skinner watched a long moment and then bent and picked up the photo that had fluttered unnoticed to the floor. He looked at the blood-stained image for a long time and then finally returned the picture to Mulder.

"You'll find her." The voice of a lover, not an AD.

Hazel eyes slowly focused back into the present. "Maybe." A sigh. "If it was really her."

"You'll find her."

Standing outside Mulder's door, Skinner wondered about the wisdom of his being there. Mulder had been through both heaven and hell in the last 72 hours and was no doubt strung as tightly as a compound bow -- and Skinner had no intention of being the target into which the arrow was released. But still, he had to be here. 

He stood for a moment, wondering whether to knock, or to use the key that he kept, unmarked, inside his wallet. Not on his key ring. Never on his key ring.

He had just raised his hand when the door opened slowly.

"It's you." Mulder's voice was level, unsurprised.

"How did you...?"

"Your shadow under the door." He'd been sitting in his living room just watching shadows pass his front door? Or had he been waiting for a particular, familiar shadow?

"Are you going to come in?" The voice finally showing some inflection, slightly mocking. They both knew what he was doing here.

Seized by a sudden and paralyzing uncertainty. "Maybe I shouldn't..."

"Come in. Just come in." Turning away without even seeing if Skinner would follow. Which of course he did. Already feeling his chest tightening a little, his breaths coming a little shallower.

Mulder was waiting for him in the middle of the darkened living room. The street lights through the blinds casting unreliable, broken light across his body in bars. Skinner could see a faint glint of amusement in the hazel eyes that watched him seemingly without blinking. But behind the amusement was something else. Skinner stopped in his tracks, mesmerized by the myriad emotions that he could suddenly see. He was in danger of falling forever into the depths of longing, hope, lust, misery, and trust that pulled at him. Tried to lure him.

Then Mulder blinked and the depths disappeared behind the familiar mocking mask, although the lust and need remained. "You just going to stand there all night?" Almost plaintive.

"Mulder." Why did he always find himself growling at the younger man? But he moved forward until they nearly met. The heat from their bodies reaching out, enveloping them. Mulder's scent wrapping itself around his consciousness. His body tightening, hardening. He very carefully did not allow them to touch at any point.

Mulder watched him. The agent's eyes now giving nothing away. Waiting. Across the tiny space that separated them. 

Why am I here? Skinner was appalled to realize he'd voiced the words aloud. Watched Mulder flinch in slow motion -- the ripples of fear running through his frame like a tree bending under the onslaught of a storm.

"Why are you here?" "I didn't mean..." 

Their sentences clashing and overlapping. Mulder finally surrendering the field -- waiting.

Now finally he reached out to touch the man in front of him, gently cupping Mulder's face, moving forward until their foreheads just touched. "I know why I'm here. I always know." Voice kept quiet and level with an effort that revealed itself in the trembling in his body.

Mulder slid his hands around Skinner's waist, stilling the tremors --simply holding--not caressing, not moving at all. "I knew you'd come. I was waiting. You would have to come, since she..." his voice breaking.

"Yeah." Voice rougher now, unbidden emotions rising in his chest, hot and angry. Unwarranted, but unavoidable. Trying to contain them. "We won, didn't we?"

"She's ok. We're ok." Something almost like a laugh evident. "God, I sound like something out of a '70s pop psychology text." 

Skinner recognized the humor for the shield that it was. Had no words to answer it. Could only tighten his grip for a moment, before moving to gather the agent in close to his body. Felt Mulder stiffen and then sag into his embrace. The agent's frame melding to his, holding tight and tighter. Almost expected for a moment to feel tears.

Shudders wracking them both, the knife wound of his gut slowly closing, leaving only a phantom ache. It was still all right. It would be all right. The connection between them stretched and frayed, but still there, still binding. Binding them to each other --to an undefinable future.

Skinner groaned and pulled Mulder even closer into his body. Feeling the hard chest meeting his own, the hot length of Mulder's erection pressing into his body, his own cock straining to meet the other. 

Shifting his hips just a little to let their enflamed members brush, rub. Mulder sighed and returned the hard embrace, moving his arms to circle Skinner's back, hands beginning to move restlessly--pushing up under the suit jacket, plucking at the starched shirt, digging into the tense muscles.

He could feel the change rip through Mulder like a lightning bolt. Could actually smell and taste the surge of arousal that ran riptide through the other man's veins. The younger man's mouth suddenly open against his throat, lips brushing, tongue tasting, teeth nipping as he moved away just enough to trail kisses and bites across the AD's neck and jawline. Evening beards rasping against each other --skin sensitized to an almost unbearable degree. He allowed Mulder to take the lead, surrendered momentarily to his seduction, his need. Let himself simply experience the feel of the body against his, the mouth trailing fire, the hands making promises as they roamed and caressed. 

Mulder's hand reaching between them, grasping Skinner's cock through the fabric of his trousers. His hips thrusting into the clever fingers, a gasp torn from his strangely air-starved lungs. "Oh god. Yes." The relentless stroking moving him close to the edge. Too close.

Reaching in to the dark place in the center of his soul, he fought to regain control. Pulled away slightly, allowed his own hands to begin the journey across Mulder's body that he had first mapped more than two years before. To travel across the shoulders, the ribs, the slim hips, the firm ass. One hand reaching behind Mulder's head to finally bring their lips together in a kiss.

Mouths moving and slanting across each other. The sweep of a tongue, mouths opening, softening, and then battling. Tongues sliding across each other to seek the rough, hot interiors, smoothing over teeth. Breaking only long enough to draw deep gasping breaths. Then returning again and again to their kiss that became the only thing in the world. Their universe narrowed to this room, this moment. 

The sweet fury of their mouths' connection always more than he expected. That slice of time during which they were permitted to be only themselves. Every time it happened he wondered where he found the strength to walk away each time. But the strength came from the kisses.

Pulse racing, Skinner realized that Mulder was beginning to unbutton his shirt, the elegant fingers moving to unknot his tie, silk sliding to the floor with a slick whisper. Instinctively he mirrored the actions, moving to disrobe his lover, meeting him more than half-way.

Shirts gone now, and their hands moved over fevered skin, branding the scars and sinew that moved beneath their touches. Skinner bent began to suck and lave Mulder's nipple. Feeling it pucker into hardness beneath his mouth; feeling more than hearing Mulder's groans and whispered pleas that dear god he shouldn't stop, shouldn't stop, never stop. The voice of the younger man overriding that detached voice in the back of his own head that snidely informed him that this savage lust was nothing more than a reaction to the near deaths that they had faced.

He told his superego to shut the fuck up, and surrendered himself to the feel of Mulder's hands clutching his shoulder, clenching hard enough to bruise as Skinner began smoothing his palm over Mulder's rampant erection. Pressing back as Mulder's hips bucked helplessly.

"Oh christ--don't...."

Driven now by something primitive and feral, shoes, pants, socks, boxers were discarded with ungodly haste, strewn without care as they maneuvered toward the couch. 

The lights from the streetlamps were clearer here, Mulder's face more visible as he lay back, pulling Skinner toward him. God, Skinner was nearly lost at that moment--the smell of the leather couch overlaid with the scent of Mulder's arousal; hot, damp skin pressing into him, the sound of the leather creaking under them. He wanted to catalog each of the sensations individually--to remember them forever--but they jumbled together in the maelstrom of the moment, pulling him into the fury of the storm. Lost. Always lost.

Their erections pulsing together--arching into each other helplessly.

Mulder tossed his head back, seemingly caught in the same wave of sensation overtaking Skinner. For a moment the AD simply watched him, fascinated by the abandon on the man's face, the pure sensuality. An unexpected wave of tenderness swept him, and he found himself kissing his way down the center of Mulder's torso, until he reached the straining cock. 

Pausing to look once more at Mulder, he met the hooded eyes, and then gently engulfing the head of Mulder's penis. The bitter familiar taste of pre-cum, underlaid by the taste that he knew simply as Mulder. Hot, hard, alive, he worked the length in his mouth carefully, deliberately. Setting a pace he'd learned so long ago. Moving up and down the shaft, pressing his tongue against the underside. 

He cradled Mulder's balls in his hand, rolling them carefully, feeling them begin to tighten. He increased his pace, just a little. Heard wordless groans and whimpers from the man writhing beneath him. Continued his relentless assault. Just a little faster. 

"Oh God! Don't...." Mulder couldn't even finish the plea. His hips raising up, his cry choked off, he came with a suddenness that startled both of them -- his orgasm nearly violent in its intensity. Skinner swallowed the salty, bittersweet fluid, licking Mulder clean, gentling him down from the small spasms that still wracked him. 

At last they both lay still, panting, breath returning slowly.

Skinner moved back up to stretch along Mulder's body. Rolled them so that they lay pressed together, Mulder leaning into his body, his head resting on Skinner's chest. Simply lying there. Simply being. He thought maybe Mulder had fallen asleep.

"Holy shit." The quiet voice startled him.

"Yeah." Just holding him. Strangely peaceful. Silence after the violence of a storm. This peace was what he'd sought this evening. This was why he had come here. Connection, affirmation of life. But so much more than that.

Mulder finally stirring -- reaching between them to grasp Skinner's throbbing cock. Fingers sliding up and down the length. Skinner barely able to stifle the groan that reverberated through every cell of his being.

"You don't have to..."

"Shhhh....It's ok." Mulder still semi-dazed by his orgasm, managed to look both debauched and amused. His fingers stilled, so that he simply held Skinner's shaft -- firmly, warmly.

A deep breath and then sudden movement--Mulder standing over him, Skinner cold and bereft on the couch, looking up at him.

"What are you...?"

"You know you prefer the bedroom." It was true. He did. The small knowledges they had of each other still a source of surprise.

Hands pulling him to his feet, leading him back to the room that was even dimmer than then living room. In near darkness, he heard the slick sound of lube being rubbed between palms, and then the warm slickness of it being rubbed teasingly on his cock. 

Without his glasses, lost in the shadows, he allowed himself to be driven by feel only, to follow the direction of the friendly hands, to press up against the willing, familiar body, to drive deeply into the offered tightness. In and out, in and out, thrusting to a rhythm that echoed in a corner of his soul that he forgot he possessed most days. Slapping against a body that met him willingly, meeting the hands and mouth that reached for him. Answering the urgency of the man under him with his own demands. And finally, feeling the tightening low in his belly, the fire flowing to center in his groin, and then the sparks radiating out and back and through, and he was tumbling without direction--weightless. Released.

It was not yet dawn. Climbing back into his clothes, moving with a stealth that was borne of hard experience and more recent practice, he found himself dressed and alone in Mulder's living room, staring blindly out the window. He knew he needed to leave but couldn't, somehow.

Cursing himself for being a fool, he moved back to stand in the doorway to Mulder's bedroom and watched the agent sleep for a long minute. Watched until Mulder, with that sixth sense of his, opened his eyes.

No words for a long time. 

"Just lock the door behind you." The tone deceptively light.

"Mulder." Exasperation, warning, and quiet affection in the word.

"I know." A sigh. He seemed to be considering something weighty. "You came." No hidden sexual teasing here. It was almost a question.

"Yes." Almost a promise.

"We made it." The optimism that could still surprise him.

"So far." It was not going to be this easy. And even here and now he couldn't sidestep that.

Mulder began to surrender to sleep again. "So far." Voice almost inaudible now. Eyes closed. "You came."

Always, he thought to himself as he left again. Always.

END

Feedback very much appreciated. 

 

* * *

 

Lightning Crashes III: Darkness  
By Rye ()  
March 1999  
Category: V, A  
Rating: R  
Keywords: Slash, Mulder/Skinner  
Spoilers: US6 - SR819  
Summary: An interlude in the Lightning Crashes universe. How do you protect something that was never yours to begin with? A missing scene from SR819.  
Sorry I've been gone for a while. It's been...busy. If you need the first two parts of this series, just let me know.  
Disclaimer: Still not mine. Wish they were, though....I'd only rumple them slightly....  
Thanks to CGS, who is the Absolute Editor.

* * *

Walter Skinner's Apartment  
Crystal City, VA  
11:47 p.m.

The hallway was empty, and humming with that barely perceptible pitch that florescent lights emit in the silence of uninhabited spaces.

The door was simply one more door in the hallway--the same as any other. Remarkable only in its complete lack of any personalization. No ornate knocker, no wreath (god forbid), no nameplate. Just a beige door, and yet it was a barrier that suddenly seemed to loom large and unbreachable. Mulder knocked anyway.

Skinner had been released from the hospital two days ago, and aside from a curt voicemail jointly sent to him and Scully informing them that he would return to the office the following Monday, Mulder hadn't heard a word from the AD.

Not that he'd expected one.

But still, here he was. Wondering at his own foolishness, and understanding at the same time that he had no choice but to stand here and wait...

He heard the footsteps behind the door. The pause that told him Skinner was eyeing him through the peephole and probably reholstering his gun. Then a longer pause that carried endless moments of wondering if the door would open, or if he would simply hear the footsteps receding.

The sharp ache that cut through his gut when the door opened could have been either relief or terror.

"She told me, you know." It wasn't what he'd planned on saying. But it was the only thing he could find the words to utter, his voice surprisingly rough and uncertain in his own ears.

Meeting the steady brown gaze only partly concealed by the glasses, Mulder plunged on, heedless to the further tightening in his gut that warned him this might be a mistake.

"She told me what you said to her--about not being enough of an ally for us, about not being pulled in. How could you believe that?" He could hear a thin undercurrent of desperation in his voice and wondered if Skinner heard it, too.

Shit. This had been a mistake. The brief clenching of Skinner's jaw signaled that he was ruthlessly suppressing some impatient remark --calculating exactly what to say to make Mulder go away as quickly as possible. He couldn't let that happen. He needed to be here.

Skinner regarded him impassively for a long moment, seemingly reading the conflict roiling through his agent's eyes, and finally stood aside and gestured him wordlessly into the dimly lit living room.

"Drink?" The offer was unexpected, as was the quietly resigned tone.

But god he was alive, Skinner was alive.

"Yeah." 

Skinner handed him a glass of scotch and then settled into one of the leather armchairs at the end of his coffee table. He looked so painfully alone. Isolated by all that had happened in those horrible 24 hours and all that had happened after. 

The AD had been held at the hospital for 3 more days, undergoing tests that Mulder could only begin to imagine. Even Scully, stoic for herself and for the world at large, usually, had met him in the corridor one of the afternoons and simply said, "Let's leave him be for a bit. I think he needs some time to recover." Mulder never asked her what procedure had just been done, he didn't have the courage. When he went back a couple of hours later, Skinner was lying there--pale, a light sheen of sweat evident on his forehead, his eyes naked and empty. It had terrified Mulder.

He'd visited Skinner each day, of course, joking lightly during their time together, aware that there was a guard present, aware of their audience. Had tried to convey something else entirely with his eyes, but had no sense if the message had been received. The need to see Skinner, alone, had finally overwhelmed him today, and he'd found himself at the front door of the nearly anonymous apartment, cursing himself for a fool, and yet recognizing the darker truth that underlay the tightness in his gut.

It was even harder than he'd expected. Standing here, a place he'd been at least a dozen times before, looking at the man sitting in the chair, he was at a loss. Trying to find the words to reach through Skinner's armor of silence. He needed to touch him; reach him.

The scotch burned a path to his gut. He sat on the end of the couch closest to Skinner, still searching for words.

A small huff. "Why are you here, Mulder?" Skinner wasn't looking at him....was staring out into some middle distance that seemed to hold unnamed horrors. The middle distance that seemed to occupy him more and more.

Why indeed? How to answer that question that contained so many hidden traps?

"I just thought I'd say 'hey'?" The attempt at humor probably a mistake. Too facile, too easy for this situation. Trying to make light of that horrible night when it had all began.

Dark laughter, and something that might have been a smile briefly twisted Skinner's lips. "Hey? I think we've been here before."

"Yeah--I know." A sigh he couldn't hold back. "But not with the same outcome, I hope." Voice now very small. "I don't think I could go through that again." Staring down at the beige anonymous carpet, unable to look up to see the reaction.

A surprisingly strong, wry reply. "I don't think I could, either." Then a pause. "Why are you here?"

He closed his eyes, and tried to find again the courage that had brought him here in the first place. "I had to talk to you. Had to see you. She told me what you said to her in the hospital. That you regretted not making our quest your own. That you never let yourself be pulled in. But you have, you did. You have been there for us, you have risked your life and your career for me, for us more times than I can count." It wasn't all that he needed to say, but it was a start.

A long, difficult pause this time.

"But I haven't done everything I could have, and I still ca--..." Skinner's voice broke off, something almost like pain in it. 

Mulder's head jerked up. "You have done what you could--more sometimes. She still doesn't know about your deal, you know. I didn't tell her what you tried to do with your bargain with that smoking bastard."

"Scarcely matters. We both know that it got me, and her precisely nowhere." The bitterness of that knowledge flaring cold and bright through the darkened room.

"But you tried, you risked everything."

Skinner drained the last of his drink and deliberately placed his tumbler on the table before taking off his glasses and scrubbing his face with his fingers. Suddenly Mulder could see weariness in every line of the AD's body.

Face still buried in his hands, his voice was muffled. "I'm not going to argue with you about this, Mulder. Why are we having this conversation?"

It was late and this was going nowhere. He knew why he had come, but being here, in this room, with this man, he found his motives and reasons becoming confused and snarled. 

"Because I had to tell you--"

Skinner's head jerked up, an unnamable tension radiating throughout his body. 

Mulder plunged on, desperately trying to ignore the danger that seemed to emanate from the man across from him. "I wanted to tell you...." He didn't even have the words to say what he needed to, the language failed him utterly. There was no vocabulary to describe the feelings that gripped him.

He stood, and walked over to Skinner, crouched down in front of him, took his hands. Felt Skinner suppress a small movement--not sure if he was fighting the urge to twine his fingers with Mulder's or to take his hands away.

And finally there were no words for what he wanted to say. What he needed the other man to understand. How do you express a need that is so dark it has no name? How do you say to someone 'I had to watch you dying. It nearly destroyed me, because I realized wasn't sure what would happen to me if you died'? 

Because the simple truth was that he had felt torn in half during that day. Half of him had been racing heedlessly, recklessly from possible lead to desperate hunch, trying to find any trace of something or someone that could stay the hand of the slow execution that was killing Walter Skinner. The other half of him had stayed in that hospital--by Walter's side, hovering, waiting, longing to do something, needing simply to be there.

He had trusted Scully, without word, without question to do everything in her power to save Skinner. Knew that she would throw her formidable spirit and talents and intelligence into deciphering and defeating the thing that Skinner at its mercy. But still, he had wanted to be there. To simply stay with him.

The whole thing had been all too reminiscent of other desperate, hopeless chases in his life--the chase across the arctic wastes for answers about Samantha, the race for the chip that even now seemed to be both saving Scully and threatening her, his endless chase for answers that were always close, but always just beyond his grasp.

And yet, and yet, here they were. Alive, and perhaps not without hope.

Skinner continued to regard him almost impassively. A strange light lurked just below the surface of his gaze, a guttering candle.

Realizing that he would never have the words, Mulder did the only thing he knew to do. He leaned forward and kissed Skinner.

The hard, familiar mouth resisted him for just a moment, before softening just slightly. For a time, there was only the heated reality of their mouths mating. Lips pressing, parting, the sinuous wet movement of the tongue across his own, the casual possession of his mouth, his soul.

His hands tightened around Skinner's, a necessary grip to maintain sanity and pure physical balance. This kiss alone was sending him spiraling outward, already sinking fast into a siren call of lust, need, and jagged, tight tenderness.

He shifted, prelude to moving up and forward, to taking this to the next level. Deeper, closer intimacy. And was left gasping and bereft as Skinner suddenly stood up and stepped around him, stalking soundlessly over to stare out into the nightscape that lay outside his living room window.

"What...?" His voice thin, reedy.

"Go away, Mulder." Skinner's voice was level, uninflected, but Mulder could see from the jerky movements of his shoulders that the AD was barely in check.

He crossed to stand behind Skinner, seeing their dual reflections in the plate glass of the window. The lights from the urban centers below them merging and distorting their images.

He was close enough to feel the heat from Skinner's body, to smell the unmistakable musk and clean, dry scent that was Skinner's alone. But he didn't touch him. Some primal instinct kept him just far enough away to allow space for breath and reason.

"What the hell was that?" Mulder was vaguely dismayed by the near petulance in his voice.

"Nothing. Just....nothing. This isn't a good idea." The growl dropped to something almost inaudible. "It probably wasn't ever a good idea."

At that he had to reach out, to touch, to try to connect through the nightmare-sense of unreality that threatened to pull him under. Hands on Skinner's shoulders, trying to turn him around to face him, he might as well have been trying to turn a marble statue.

"Don't say that. God, don't say that. What's going on?" 

Silence alone answered him for unbearable eon. But something in his tone must have reached Skinner, because after a shuddering sigh, he turned around to meet Mulder's eyes. The younger man was shocked by the desolation he saw.

"Shit." The wind almost knocked out of him with sudden dread. "What is it? Scully said you were going to be fine.."

"That's not it." Curt dismissal of his concern.

"Then what?"

Another sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his being. "It's nothing. Just, please go." The closest he'd ever heard to pleading in that voice.

"Why? Did I do something...."

"Dammit, Mulder!" The familiar growl apparent again. "Let it go. I've already told you--not everything is about you."

Hurt and concern now warring with an undeniable instinct that something was wrong. But he could also read the set of the jaw, the rigid squaring of the shoulders. Knew that even now his time was running out.

It had taken him a long time to learn it, but Mulder had learned to recognize when strategic retreats were good decisions.

A step back. Not outright capitulation--still well within Skinner's space--but a small concession. "I think I should stay." Still testing, even as he was backing down.

"Go." The voice softer now, not gentle, but not barking commands.

"I'll be back."

"Yes, I imagine you'll try."

The words did not go unnoticed. "I can be pretty fucking persistent."

"So can I." A challenge that seemed unnecessary, and therefore dangerous. 

For a brief moment he could feel the heat of their kiss again. Replayed it though his quirky memory, trying to taste the moment he had lost the connection, trying to understand this man in front of him. 

Skinner simply watched him with bemusement.

"I'm going." Turning, getting his coat, realizing that Skinner had never moved.

At the door, looking back for one second. "I'll be back."

As the door closed behind him, he could have sworn he heard an almost inaudible response. "I'll be here."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Skinner watched the door close with a grim satisfaction. Felt the click of the lock echoing in the hollow spaces of his gut. 

Empty. Deserted. Alone.

Again.

Always it came to this. Always he was cut off from those to whom he would reach out. Depend on. Trust. And seek to be trusted by.

Alone.

He'd looked at the surveillance photos. Had gotten them from Agent Anderson, who didn't realize that he shouldn't be bringing evidence to the AD in the hospital. He knew the adversary who held the controls on these things in his blood. Knew the name and face that would now haunt all his darker hours.

There is always a price for knowledge. Once you know, you must act.

He couldn't have this any longer. He'd had to send Mulder away. There was no choice. 

No choice.

He had been poisoned. He was poison now. And he'd be damned if he'd allow his....connection to Mulder be poisoned, too. The connection had sustained him through so much already, but he would not allow it to be taken. To be tainted. So Mulder had been sent away. Because it was the only way to save him.

Skinner waited in the darkness. Waiting for the darkness.

END

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